The call for abstracts deadline is Jan. 15 for the next AAPG International Conference and Exhibition – a meeting that will be historic on many levels. This year’s ICE will be held Sept. 13-16 in Melbourne, Australia – the first time AAPG has used that city as a setting for ICE.

According to Juan Carlos Soldo, who just recently led the successful IX Hydrocarbon Exploration and Development Congress in Mendoza, Argentina, “Unconventionals really aren't so unconventional anymore.”

Oil should be a blessing. It creates jobs and puts food on the table for millions of people. It fuels the power that drives industrial growth and development to move countries beyond oil and gas into a sustainable future. That is how the first female president of NAPE views the hydrocarbons she has been working to discover since beginning her career 24 years ago.

The need for research to help understand the causes and mitigate induced seismicity was one of several topics at several recent Washington, D.C., workshops that explored what we know about the subsurface and its response to energy extraction technologies – and what research is needed for more efficient and safe energy development.

Three-D seismic surveys always suffer from poor sampling along at least one spatial dimension – that’s why many techniques have been developed over the years to interpolate data, in particular before final migration.

In many environmental areas, it seems the energy industry is often on the defensive and is forced to react to real or perceived environmental issues rather than employ forethought to anticipate the majority of issues that might arise from energy-related activities.

The call for abstracts is open for the next AAPG International Conference and Exhibition – a meeting that will be historic on many levels. The 2015 ICE will be held Sept. 13-16 in the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia– the first time ever AAPG has used that city as a setting for ICE. The meeting will be hosted by the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia.

When it comes to downhole geology, little things matter. Those “things” would include the realm of microseismic measurements, because as unconventional plays and hydraulic fracturing become the norm throughout the industry, the need for microseismic imaging grows in importance. Companies large and small are constantly developing, testing and using this technology, hoping to add value to today’s efforts.

What’s new in downhole geology, you ask? According to the advertising and press releases that are sent throughout the media, there’s a lot that’s new – more, in fact, than we could ever cover. But since this is our annual Downhole Geology issue, we thought we’d take a look at some of the latest advancements in drilling, well-logging and other downhole innovations rolled out in recent months by a few industry heavy-hitters.

Connectivity in deepwater deposited reservoirs is often times something you don’t know for certainty until you have a well down and flowing. This course is for engineers, geologists and geophysicists who are responsible for economically positive exploration and development of deep-marine reservoirs. It is particularly appropriate for geologist-engineer teams who are responsible for building reservoir development models in these complex systems.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

The goal of seismic amplitude interpretation and this course is the validation of reservoir composition. Upon course completion, participants should be able to select the appropriate techniques for pore-fluid and lithology prediction from seismic data.

A succession of exercises and complementary
lectures will expose the participants to deep-water depositional systems, facies analysis, chronostratigraphic framework, comparison of local to global depositional patterns, and application of an integrated approach to stratigraphic analyses using multiple data sets.

Much of today’s resource play drilling activity focuses on evaluating properties and holding acreage. As resource plays mature, we will want to identify bypassed pay and evaluate the benefits of restimulation. Even with access to such modern data, geology, and hence seismic data and seismic attributes are only one of the components necessary to predict EUR.

Permanent Reservoir Monitoring, also known as Life-of-Field Seismic, using permanently installed seismic cables, has been characterized by a few key marker projects but did not reach mainstream status during its first ten years. However, since the start of its second decade we have witnessed a flurry of new projects and activity so far, both in the Americas (Brazil) and Europe (Norway). Within a time span of about three years, these efforts combined are already dwarfing the efforts of the first 10 years.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

This course is designed to enhance interpretation skill sets with regard to geologic interpretation of seismic data. The overall objective is to present methods for reducing risk with regard to prediction of lithology, reservoir compartmentalization and stratigraphic trapping potential in exploration and production.

This one-day field trip will apply new crustal-scale seismic experiments and structural balancing in the Northern Rockies to the 3D Laramide geometry and natural fractures of the Denver Basin and its resource plays. We will also examine the resulting syn-and post-Laramide fracture systems that provide critical fluid conduits for successful resource plays, like the Niobrara play of the Eastern Rockies.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

The seminar will utilize traverses to examine multiple thrust sheets exposed in Sun River Canyon, the famous Teton Anticline, and an outstanding example of an exposed fractured reservoir along a fault‐propagated fold in Mississippian carbonates as Swift Reservoir. Participants will examine the mechanics of fracturing, folding, and faulting in thrust belt terrains, identify and discuss new ideas regarding the geometry and kinematics of the development of thrust belts, compare seismic interpretation with outcrop examples, and analyze stratigraphic concepts which are essential in the exploration of thrust belt targets.

This structural field course in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies focuses on relating outcrop to seismic expressions of compressive structural styles that are common in fold-and-thrust belts and deepwater passive margins (toe thrust belts) worldwide. Participants will recognize common types of structures in fold-and-thrust belts, apply fault-related folding concepts to interpret these structures, identify petroleum traps and their major structural risk elements, and recognize similarities between styles of trap and reservoir-scale deformation.

The course is a practical and applied introduction to geochemical techniques routinely employed in shale-gas condensate and tight-oil reservoir assessment with an emphasis on tools and techniques. Participants should have a solid background in petroleum geology.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

Take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn all the aspects related to the understanding and modeling of fractured reservoirs. Attendees will take geologic concepts and use them in reservoir modeling through hands-on sessions devoted to the examination of outcrop, core and log data. They will use that information and a software to create 3D fractured reservoir models. Using actual Teapot Dome (Wyoming, USA) field data from the Tensleep and Niobrara Shale formations and a hands-on approach, the workshop allows the geoscientist to identify fractures and to construct predictive 3D fracture models that can be used to identify productive zones, plan wells and to create fracture porosity and permeability models for reservoir simulation.

This course is a non-numerical introduction to the use of geochemistry and BPSM to better understanding unconventional resources. This course is designed to provide participants with new information on unconventional and sweet spot identification that is not normally available in routine service company courses.

Participants will learn a specific and comprehensive methodology for finding and developing conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources associated with lake deposits. The seminar will start with the Quaternary Bonneville basin in Utah, to build familiarity with lacustrine depositional processes. Participants then examine world-famous exposures of organic-rich mudstone, fluvial sandstone, and carbonate microbialite facies in Wyoming.

This workshop is the outgrowth of continued cooperation between AAPG & EAGE to develop a series of multi-disciplined gatherings dedicated to understanding, completing & producing tight sandstone & carbonate reservoirs.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

Online Training

Cross disciplinary workflows play an important part of successful characterization of shale reservoirs. This course discusses how the artificial kerogen maturity of organic-rich Green River shale affects the petrophysical, micro-structural, geochemical and elastic properties.

This course is ideal for individuals involved in Midland Basin exploration and development. Successful development of Wolfcamp shale oil relies on complex inter-relationships (ultimately interdependencies) within and between a wide variety of scientific disciplines, financial entities, and company partnerships.

Recognition and Correlation of the Eagle Ford, Austin Formations in South Texas can be enhanced with High Resolution Biostratigraphy, fossil abundance peaks and Maximum Flooding Surfaces correlated to Upper Cretaceous sequence stratigraphic cycle chart after Gradstein, 2010.

There are more approximately 1,000 oil and gas fields in the world that have been classified as "giant," containing more than 500 million barrels of recoverable oil and /or 3 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Projects in several shales will be discussed, including Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Fayetteville, Montney, and Barnett, as will several seismically-detectable drivers for success including lithofacies, stress, pre-existing fractures, and pore pressure.

The presentation describes a well established fracture modeling workflow that uses a standard 3D seismic, conventional logs, image logs and data from one core to build predictive 3D fracture models that are validated with blind wells.